‘It’s not the winning, it’s the taking apart, of your opponents, that counts’. Helen Lederer on BBC TV this morning. This is the pseudo macho attitude of most sports people, be they players or followers. Let’s face it most sports people are nothing more than a group of ball manipulators.
Let’s face it there is more claptrap written and spoken about sport then any other subject. ‘It’s the taking part that counts’ – bah humbug. Stand near any amateur football, hockey or cricket match and what do you hear. Swearing, threats and usually dirty violence, when the referee or linesman is not working. When someone has fouled the poor umpire is surrounded and intimidated, as in a gangster or gang movie. And Good losers? No
Fans are often worse. Abuse, objects thrown, racial chanting, stoning team coaches and beating up rival fans are not that uncommon in this country, the UK. Parents at school events, shout, swear, even attack players and even fight.
Parents attacking a line umpire at a hockey match in mild mannered Canada
Sport stars are, and have to be, totally selfish. They have to be totally focused and getting themselves fit, focused, motivated and health issues. This means their conversation is totally focused on sport and their bodily issues.
Which leaves me to another reason to dislike sports people they sweat, smell of linament and have no compunction to burp and fart in polite company. And they think its funny even when you’ve heard them release gas for the thousandth and oneth time. They also don’t seem how to control their drinking.
Then there is this sporting fascism, which get in schools, pubs and in the workplace. You are weird if you are not interested in sports. You are weird if you are not the least bit interested in who kicked a ball into a goal, bashed over a net or dropped it in a whole. You are weird if you don’t support a particular team or waste your money buying a rip off, over priced shirt, which is a cheaply made replica of this overpaid sporting star.
This sporting fascism results in bullying at school. You have a few school sports stars, lot of kids hanging around them, laughing at the star’s repetitive jokes, even if they are not that funny. Anyone who is not interested is pressured. Those that disagree are considered geeks or as they can’t do sport must be ‘queer’, which of course is a complete no-no to people who engage in what is a blatantly homo-erotic team activity.
And if you want to watch homo-erotic activity just sit in a pub when the college rugby team is celebrating. Watch as everyone has to drink at the same rate as the faster drinkers. Then wait until the ever so amusing, brilliant idea emerges that it is fun for people to take their pants down, then there is the great idea of sticking a rolled up newspaper up someone’s back side and setting it on fire. Always at 10:35 in the evening.
The home of Buckfast rugby – as seen in News of the World”, a reference to a newspaper story in 2006 when the players were banned from the student union for taking their clothes off, comparing each other’s private parts and indulging in group hugs.
Competition is good, so we’re told. Competitive sports in schools builds character and is a reflection of the real world. However, the sports do not like competition. If someone is better than at maths, can write a sentence which contains a verb and a full stop, understands physics or enjoys literature, then they will be taken down with aggressive humour, pushed, nudged, humiliated and even beaten up. Muscles beats intelligence, sorry muscles beat up intelligence.
Bill Shankly once said ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’ Unfortunately for many school kids this is a fact. They read about the lifestyles of the rich and famous players and feel that because they are an OK player in the school yard that it will then be easy for them to have that lifestyle. It’s not easy. It requires a lot of work and an incredible amount of luck.
In the workplace, or in the pub, a man has to actually follow, or pretend to follow, a team and has to spend some time learning the appropriate cliches and stastistics. The only other topics of permitted conversations are that breats, the larger the better; poor, often racist jokes; and general moans about the world in general. Playing this game in many large businesses helps with promotion and is one of the reasons middle management in Britain is so bad.
The worst example of this aggressive, macho competition in the workplace results in the complete disaster of the financial markets, which have caused the current recession. People that have warned of the approaching abyss were attacked as poor team players and often sacked.
I’m OK with sport being taught at schools, but let’s not force the 40% or so of boys, and the 60% of girls, play games that they see as pointless. Provide those that don’t want to play other activities Tai chi, sailing, working out in a gym, archery and even walking. Team sports should be available for those that want it. But let’s not let sports dominate school life.
But if we want true competitiveness in schools then other subjects should also be competitive. Though of course this is then considered elitism and although we can have sport academies there is a hatred of grammar schools, where the more academic can be fully stretched.